Police Pursuit Ends At Work Zone, Suspect Nabbed

This is an archived article and the information in the article may be outdated. Please look at the time stamp on the story to see when it was last updated.

Police Pursuit Ends At Work Zone, Suspect Nabbed

TAYLOR — A man from New York is facing felony charges for leading police in Luzerne and Lackawanna County on a pursuit through three boroughs.

But, police stopped the man just before a construction zone in Taylor.

Duryea Police tried to pull over Janusz Uruski of Brooklyn in Luzerne County for a traffic violation but he never stopped. Police said he picked up speed winding through Old Forge and then Taylor where he was headed straight for a PennDOT crew working on Main Street.

It took four hits with a taser to get Janusz Uruski out of his car. Three police officers were hurt in the process of putting cuffs on the man police feared would leave a lot more damage.

Police followed him through Duryea, Old Forge, and finally in Taylor. Officers boxed him out just short of two work crews and a line of cars stopped in traffic.

“He was going fast. Then he skidded to a stop because there was no where he could go,” said Alex Dieterich, who was working for a private contractor in the area.

The PennDOT flagger right in the Uruski’s path said his car came up fast.

“Because if he came through we could have easily been hit. We’re taking up half the road here. Luckily, I had the traffic stopped, who knows what would have happened,” the flagger said.

Police charged Uruski with aggravated assault, resisting arrest, and reckless endangerment for the damage he could have caused to the PennDOT crew.

“It’s dangerous, on a day-to-day basis, you get people who aren’t paying attention and they go right through the stop sign. With the chase obviously he wasn’t stopping. He could have hurt anybody. I’m happy that he got caught,” added Dieterich.

Taylor Police said it would have been against their police chase policy to follow Uruski any farther since officers in Duryea were only trying to pull him over for a traffic violation.

But, the work on Main Street altered their plans.

“We were not going to engage in this pursuit until we found PennDOT doing road maintenance on Main Street, that’s when we decided to take action,” said Officer Steve Derenick of Taylor Police.

Police said it was not a high-speed chase. Officers from Duryea and Old Forge followed behind Uruski’s car with lights and sirens on. Officers said they still don’t know why Uruski avoided them in the first place.

Kyle

Sped Fred

Kyle

Here’s how this actually went down, This guy driving wreck-less almost plowed into my car at the intersection of Rt11 and SR 92. I then followed the car and he continued to driving all over the road and in the opposite lane. At 8:55am I call 911 to report this driver as I followed him into Duryea where he pulled over in front of Monkey Music. I remained on the line with dispatch when the Duryea police officer approached the car where I then signaled him that was the car. That when the chase started. I wasn’t concerned about the construction workers, I was concerned for anyone who came across his path. I witnessed the whole chase right up to Taylor.